What price beauty?

How awful, Noddy. I wonder how any city could afford to raise themselves up out of floodwaters -- don't you think it is likely these will increase with global warming?

I've never visited Venice, but I wish they'd keep it maintained 'til I get there.

Over the last 40 years I've read several stories about floods in Venice. Inevitably the national community rallies round and art works are carried upstairs and mud is scrubbed of priceless pavings and walls.

Piffka, I think you're right about global warming. All those Alpine glaciers are going to melt and at least half the Alpine streams eventually drain into the Mediterranean sea. All coastal cities are at risk and Venice, a City of Canals, is at more risk than most.

I'm surprised it is not a World Heritage site... wouldn't that make it qualify for funds?

Oh, I have a lot of saved articles on this somewhere. Venice's troubles are not all of Venice's fault, over time.
Will try to gather some notes on this, and post.

I have no opinion myself at this point on who or what body politic is a culprit.

This flooding has been on-going. Is this recent article about a ratcheting up of disaster?

Well, Venice is prone to periodic flooding, since ages.

New Fellowship to investigate Venice flooding

Hi Walter! You're back! Thanks for the link -- that's from 2001 and said the problem was getting worse.

So when would be the best time to visit Venice?

(Soon and in the dry season, I'm guessing. )

I have a bunch of articles... this might be the most descriptive. I think I had an article with some kind of illustration of the gates, but I can't find it right now.

New York Times, Feb. 26, 2003
VENICE JOURNAL

If Sea Gates Don't Work, Call Canute
By FRANK BRUNI

VENICE, Feb. 25 ? November was actually the cruelest month. For about two-thirds of it, the water that usually edges and lattices this improbably liquid city sloshed amok, turning Piazza San Marco into a gargantuan puddle and other low-lying areas into shin-high wading pools.

January was bad, too. Right at the start, the lagoon rose, the canals swelled and Venetians slipped back into their galoshes, while tourists teetered atop makeshift boardwalks that had been set up to bridge the dry patches, too few and far between.
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"We've had it," said Adreano De Giulio, the manager of a restaurant here that posts, on the wall, an ever-lengthening list of each significant flood and the heights that the tides scaled. It goes back four decades and records more than 150 days of watery misery.

"It's time to do something," Mr. De Giulio said.

Now more than ever, that feeling seems to pervade this storied but endangered architectural wonderland. But this month provided a fresh illustration of how slowly and uncertainly Venice is paddling toward a solution.

In government meetings in Rome, including one today, officials were expected to give concrete approval for the construction of a sophisticated system of 79 sea gates to be placed along three openings where the Adriatic meets the lagoon in which Venice is situated.

On days of exceptionally high tides, the gates would rise from the sea floor and close those openings, controlling the water level around Venice.

But that grand plan, which would be executed over the next eight years and could cost more than $3 billion, keeps bucking up against opposition, and the meeting today did not yield a steady green light.

Officials were still wrestling with the profound concerns of environmentalists, who assert that the project would further dirty an already polluted lagoon and are pressing their case in courts.

The project has already been delayed about 20 years, during which it was researched and researched again, refined and refined anew, and batted from one Italian government to the next.

"At the end, one thing I can say is that this will be one of the most studied projects in the world," said Flavia Faccioli, an Italian architect who is supervising the project.

"If this project isn't done, or if another project isn't done, the suffering will only increase," Ms. Faccioli said in an interview on Monday, adding that already "Venice has changed in a frightening way."

Built on soggy foundations that were later weakened by industrialization, Venice has been sinking for a good long while. By some estimates, the land below the city settled by 5.1 inches over the last century, while the sea rose 4.3 inches.

Doors and windows that were once well above the pavement are now flush against it, because entire alleyways and squares have been raised through the years in an attempt to keep the city afloat.

The ground floors of many residential buildings have been abandoned and are now simply vestibules, pitted and corroded by the saltwater that laps into them during the increasingly frequent floods.

The ratio of tourists to residents is higher, in part because so many Venetians have fled for dry land, diminishing the permanent population in the historic heart of the city from about 150,000 half a century ago to about 70,000 today.

"What is at stake is the use of this city as an ordinary city," said Paolo Costa, the mayor, who has generally supported the sea gates project but has also called for more study of the environmental impact.

Mr. Costa said that without the traffic of real life through the exotic maze of Venice, it would become infinitely less enchanting.

"It would be like you were in Williamsburg," he said, referring to the American colonial village in Virginia.

Some projections for this century show that the combined effect of the sinking of Venice and the rising of the sea, worsened by global warming, would cost Venice a further 8.6 inches.

Other predictions put that measurement higher, and opponents of the project cite these in saying that the sea gates, intended to work for about 100 years, would be sufficient for only 30 to 50.

They also say that the gates would eventually have to be raised 100 times a year, not the half-dozen times that the project's supporters suggest. According to critics, that would prevent an adequate exchange of water between the lagoon and the sea, changing the lagoon's ecosystem.

"Looking long term, there's just no hope," said Dr. Albert Ammerman, a Colgate University archaeologist who has looked into the problem.

"You're going to have to do something radical and different," Dr. Ammerman said, adding that the sea gates were "a giant toy."

But with a paucity of alternatives, Venetians seem inclined to embrace the sea gates project. A recent poll of 1,500 residents showed that 67 percent support it.

They are tired of treading water.

"I've got the boots," said Matteo Toboga, who works in a bookshop here, referring to the kinds of adjustments that Venetians make. "But the last time I used them, they weren't high enough, and the water got in my shoes."

Many store owners, who cannot move from street level, hustle to move and protect their wares at the first bleat of sirens that signal a coming flood. "It takes me half an hour to dismantle the gallery and move the paintings," said one owner, Luciano Ravagnan.

"This is not mineral water we're talking about," he said, referring to the pollution of the lagoon. "It ruins everything."

He said he wanted to see the sea gates installed, and had only one concern and message for government officials. "Please," he said, "don't take another 20 years."



Tens of Thousands Flee Prague As Floods Invade Historic Center

I've seen a visual description of the gates as well, and I think I saw it a long time ago. I'd guess the plans hev been available for quite some time, possibly decades.

BumbleBeeBoogie (where is she??) posted something on a2k about Venice a while back... here's a link:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7644

In my search for this article, I trudged through my italy file...
which is quite the fat file. I ran across some old abuzz links, and was about to trash them - but then I checked to see if they worked. They did! I cut and pasted a few posts by people like LoisLane and Gaius C. Naso and Bree on places to stay in various cities. Soooooo, just ten minutes ago, I was reading about good not too expensive hotels in Venice.

there is a wonderful series on Venice on the BBC at the moment on a Saturday night, written and presented by Francesco da Mosto - whose family have lived in the same house on the grand canal for 1000 years and just along the canal is the house the family lived in before that!

His love of and knowledge of the origins, politics, art, architecture, engineering etc has been magical.

I hope you get it in the states

No, but I've read about him. (And he is ver-ry attractive.)

isn't he just! I'd trade himself in anyday and run off to Italy for Francesco! sadly he already has an English wife

I had saved an article about him, but can't find it in my italy files. (Perhaps it landed under recipes instead, and then I'll never find it..)

Thanks Vivien, I've gone looking at the BBC press release on de Mosto. Seems to be a perfect candidate for Mr. Venice. (You ladies have excellent taste!)

Venics's problem is not just for the Venetians to solve, the rising water levels, the sinking of the city due to extraction of ground water, the increased boat wash which errodes the islands and all man made disasters incurred due to the need to service the millions of tourists who visit this most wonderful of cities. Those factors, alinged with the notorious incompatence of the Italian Governmnet, all make it a world problem if the most beautiful city on the planet is not to be lost.

But it also has to do with the Scirocco, perhaps, and something to do with landfill off of Mestre, and so on...

plus, you know, the whole building of the city now seems like a fantasy plan, city on sticks; what a history!



I just happen to be reading the latest Donna de Leon "Altae Aquae"* (high waters) - another of her police procedurals set in Venezia, featuring the incomparable Guido...

* Please excuse spelling, I don't have the book at hand..

no so much built on sticks
the basis of Venic was a whole series of small islands in what was a large lagoon, though there was a lot of use made of piles etc but basically the islands are sinking, the water is rising and unless the world extracts its digit we are going to loose the most perfect place on the planet

yeh, but the water is rising, each year, and it is not all those islands' doing


ˆjust read a long article, long, I say, long, in National Geographic on the subject - while I was in my eye doctor's office.

Trouble afoot, for sure.





ps, I am not quite as dumb as I sound... I've followed this for years, although not, I admit, perfectly.